When Clark sat down to his first RATS exam, he had already completed his Herbology CATS the previous week when the fifth years were taking their tests. As he thought that one might have possibly been the hardest one he was going to be taking this year, if only because he'd taken it after only a single year of formal classes in the subject, he felt pretty good going into his higher level exams.

Clark probably would have skipped Herbology entirely, but he'd heard Chaslyn was taking it, so if the examiners had to proctor it anyway, he figured there was no harm in giving it a go himself, since he was thinking he was going into interdisciplinary science as his college major, and having another science CATS to in his transcript might get him out of Herbology 101 next year. He hadn't had a formal independent study on the subject, the way he had with Astronomy, but he'd done periodic study of the science behind Herbology, both the muggle and magical versions of it, over his past seven years, and Professor X had been very accommodating in providing extra help, and Clark had John's notes from last year (which had needed extensive translation help, but that actually proved a boon to helping him remember that material as this naturally led to discussion and deeper research with John) so he hadn't gone in totally unprepared. Still, there had been large swaths of plants covered on the examination that he had never even heard of. If he pulled an A he'd be happy.

He at least had all the prerequisites for his RATS, including Astronomy. His independent study for that had been thorough and augmented over the summer by lessons with his dad who had graduate degrees in the both magical Astronomy and muggle astrophysics. If anything, he thought Astronomy was going to be his easiest test this week.

First though, he needed to get through the ones Sonora actually taught. He expected no trouble from Charms or Potions. He had a little trouble with putting some of the more advanced forms of transfiguration into practice but he felt solid on the various theories involved. Oliver would probably get a more solid O than he did, but he still thought he could squeak in on the low end of that score. Creatures and Defense had the same problem: they both covered a lot of discrete material that didn't build on itself, which meant bits of it were easier to forget. Clark's memory was decent though, so he thought the worst he might do was Es. The other problem they both had was that he didn't find them as intriguing as some of the other classes' material, so these were the subjects that lost study time when he was trying to bolster his herbology knowledge base.

He opened his first exam booklet and read the first question. He smiled. He had this. His quill began writing.